Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

That wasn't my pelican, he thought, I remember mine, I saved up my jiggers and bought it when I was sixteen– okay, so why do I remember the one he stomped? Hell, I even remember that its E-string screw didn't bind properly, and needed to be readjusted after every set.

Set? What do I mean set? That's right, I play at the . . . what's the name of the place? The Bom Sheltr, that's it, in Venice; of course, and I'm twenty-five—why in hell was I thinking eighteen or thirty-one?

And what in God's name am I doing back among the Jaybirds? And lining up for the communion while sober?

He paused for a moment, but a dim suspicion that he did have some presently forgotten purpose in being here made him reluctantly resume the quasi-ceremonial pace. He surreptitiously touched his wrist and was reassured to feel his knife strapped there as usual. Okay, he thought, I'll play this scene up to, but not including, the point of receiving the sacrament. This seems to be the Cerritos Stadium, and from my old birdy days I remember where the kitchen exit is; with surprise, speed and my knife, I should be able to be out of here and into the hills within two minutes.

The white-robed figure of the jaybush had been walking toward the center of the field at a slightly quicker pace than the tightening ring of communicants, and just before shoulder to shoulder contact caused the ring to stop shrinking he slipped between a couple of them and then made his way to the very center. For ten long soundless seconds he scrutinized the nervously eager people in the ring.

Then, «Kneel,» he said, in a voice like concrete blocks rubbed together.

Everyone in the stadium did, with a rustling and thudding that seemed loud in the silence. Rivas squinted up at the jaybush, and the man's robe shone so in the afternoon sun that the sky looked darkened to purple behind him. The man looked around the congregation again, then slowly crossed to stand in front of a young girl six places away to Rivas's right.

«Merge with the Lord,» the jaybush said, then reached out and touched her forehead.

She oomphed as if she'd been punched in the belly, and a moment later she was rolling on the damp ground outside the circle.

And suddenly it all came back to Rivas: Barrows hiring him to perform the redemption of Urania, the nightmare he'd had about her, and his own alarming susceptibility to this predatory religion.

Let me out of here, he thought, instinctively reaching into his sleeve for the knife; if the plain recruitment tricks can make a grinning zombie of me so easily, what would a dose of the sacrament do?

But you can't run, he realized a moment later—not without blowing your hard-won earnest-new-boy cover and wrecking your chance of finding Urania.

But I can't take the sacrament sober either, he thought desperately. His heart was pounding in his coldly hollow chest, and when he darted a glance to his right he saw that there were now only two people to be disposed of before it was his own turn. He noticed that he was whimpering deep in his throat, and with some difficulty he forced himself to stop it.

«Merge with the Lord,» said the jaybush, touching the forehead of the boy who was next in line. The boy slumped limply to the ground, and Rivas heard his jaw clack shut as his face hit the dirt.

Rivas dug up inside his sleeve and tugged slightly on the knife grip so that an inch of blade was free of the sheath, and then he pressed the nail of his thumb up against the bottom edge. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

«Merge with the Lord.» Gasp. Thud.

As he heard the jaybush's boots scuff to directly in front of him, Rivas exhaled . . .

. . . and then drove his thumb up against the blade edge, which split the nail and grated against the bone. The pain was a bright, hot flare that brought a metallic taste to his mouth, and he forced his mind to cling to the agony and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

He didn't even hear the jaybush say, «Merge with the Lord.»

There was a silent, stunning impact and then he was falling through an abyss so frigid that what lived and moved here—and he knew something did—partook of an animation below freezing, as he'd read that liquid helium was said by the ancients to begin to crawl at temperatures approaching absolute zero; his own warmth was being violently wrung out of him, but more kept on coursing into him through his left hand—specifically through his thumb.

He was being stretched both toward the bottomless cold and toward the heat, and though he sensed a tearing in himself, in his mind, he willed himself to move in the direction of the heat; then he seemed to be rushing upward, though whatever had been on the other side of the rip in his soul had now broken free of him and, alive but separate, was pacing him. It became more distant and soon he wasn't aware of it anymore, nor of the sentience in the black cold below.

What he was aware of was an aching hip and pebbly, damp dirt against his cheek. He sat up and looked around– the jaybush was gone, though the crowd around the field's periphery was still out there, and all of them were still kneeling; then he let his gaze fall onto his fellow communicants.

Only a couple had regained, or kept, consciousness, and they were blinking around stupidly like people lately roused from sodden sleep. Most were still stretched out on the dirt, several of them twitching, the rest limp and conceivably dead. Of the ones near enough to see closely, quite a few were bleeding from injuries sustained during falls or fits; his gashed thumb probably wouldn't excite any comment.

And then he realized that he was still clear-headed—as alert as he ever was, and with his memory and personality intact. This new-found pain defense worked even better than the drunk defense, for though the latter insulated him from the sacrament, it did leave him drunk.

The thought of drink reminded him of the pint of Malk whiskey concealed behind a flap in his knapsack, and brought him to his feet. He walked across the field to his own Jaybird group, being careful to act dopey and clumsy.

Sister Sue watched him approach, but the shepherd kept his back turned until Rivas paused a few feet away—then he turned around, and he was holding the pint of whiskey.

«You recover fast,» the shepherd said.

Rivas put on a foolish grin and brushed some stray strands of hair off his forehead, leaving a smear of blood over one eyebrow. «Murphy's still playing in the yard,» he said thickly, «even though Mom told him to come in.» It was the sort of thing people said when recovering from the sacrament.

«You're bleeding, Brother Boaz,» said Sister Sue in a concerned tone, at the same time giving the shepherd a hand signal that Rivas didn't catch.

«Yeah?» Rivas stared at his split thumb with what he hoped looked like foolish astonishment. «Gee.»

«Piece of old glass, probably, out there that he fell on,» said the shepherd. «Say, brother, what's this?» he asked Rivas, holding up the flat bottle.

Rivas peered at it. «Whiskey,» he said finally. «I think it's mine.»

«It was yours.»

The shepherd let it fall. It didn't break when it hit the ground, but it did when the man stamped on it. Rivas forced himself not to let his chagrin show.

«Liquor's another thing we have to sacrifice,» the shepherd told him. «You're lucky it was still full, and that the sister here says you were sober when she picked you up this morning. Still, liquor and a musical instrument, both on one novitiate.» He shook his head thoughtfully. «What's your name again?»

«Joe Wiley,» said Rivas at random. «Uh, no, sorry, I mean Brother Boaz.»

«And how old are you?»

«I . . . forget.»

The shepherd nodded, then smiled. «Did you like taking the sacrament?»